Nothing reminds you that you’re just a speck in the eye of Industry like getting stuck at a train crossing.
Freight trains cross Naito Parkway in the northern part of downtown Portland, near the river. Once you (eventually) cross those tracks, you’re in the Northwest Industrial district.
I’m headed for the Dockside Tavern, a crooked box of a building that looks like it was built out of driftwood, a long time ago. It used to face an industrialized stretch of the river; now it faces a long line of condos. I’ve always been intrigued by the place, but my goal today is to investigate it as the place in Portland where you can get a drink in closest proximity to the Portland Harbor Superfund site. I’d actually already had a few beers at the Dockside a few nights before, but I wanted to come back during the day so I could walk around and look at the river.
It’s Sunday and the new Riverscape Street, a sort of frontage road for the condo project, is lined with Mercedes-Benzes, which I assume belong to real estate agents.
On the other side of the condos, a wide esplanade has been constructed along the river. It runs about a quarter of a mile from the base of the Fremont Bridge north along the line of townhouse-style Riverscape Condos towards their crown jewel, the luxury Pacifica Tower. The whole development is partially built and partially occupied. At the north end, where the path peters out, someone has put in a little herb garden marked off with river rocks and raw construction boards.
The selling point here is simple: river view.
It’s a wide sweep of water, with a panorama of Industry on the other side: trains, smokestacks, crumbling docks and giant silos holding who-knows-what, far enough away to look kind of romantic. The water is green and blue, reflecting the sky. It doesn’t look toxic.
Oh, but it is. It’s contaminated with enough heavy metals, PCBs, dioxin and pesticides to qualify it for the Superfund list, designating it one of the most polluted spots in America. (There are about 1200 sites on the list.) The Superfund was envisioned as a way to clean up abandoned deposits of hazardous waste; the petroleum and chemical industries were taxed to create revenue for the program. Those taxes are no longer being collected, and the fund is no longer so super. That must be why my most recent water bill includes a $4.06 charge for the Portland Harbor Superfund.
Actually, it was that water bill that inspired me to seek out the Dockside. I envisioned it as the haunt of rugged Scandinavian longshoremen in watchcaps who would occasionally break out the grappling hooks if someone cheated at shuffleboard. Inside, it looks pretty much like any neighborhood bar, or rather, a little nicer, if a little more lost in time. The hanging lamps are the kind of stained glass things that used to be popular in the 1970s. There are beer signs and TVs and a menu that looks the way all menus used to look when I was a kid: multiple different kinds of burgers, clam chowder, fries, grilled cheese.
On the back of the menu is a history of the place, which has been a bar or restaurant since the 1920s. Before it was the Dockside, it was called What’s Up Doc. Before that it was called Dottie’s Sternwheeler. It became nationally notorious during the Tonya Harding scandal after incriminating evidence was found in the bar’s outside garbage receptacle.
It’s a nice enough place to have a beer, although it closes quite early. I went for happy hour with a friend one night, and then decided to return to the scene of the crime in the afternoon, when I could walk around with my dog and look at the water.
Just south of the bridge, I saw a man fishing. I wanted to know what kind of fish he was catching, and whether he would eat it. (State guidelines indicate that it’s OK to eat resident fish from this part of the river, occasionally, in small amounts, as long as you’re not pregnant, nursing, under the age of 6, or have a compromised immune system.)
When he saw my dog, he said, “That’s a nice dog.”
I said, “Thanks. Catch anything?”
“What kind of dog is that?” he asked. We talked about the dog some more. Then I said, again, “Catch anything?”
“Well, OK, then,” he said. “Have a nice day.”
